Did You Know? (Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial)
That the Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial (also known as the Man at the Wheel statue) is a tribute to the more than 10,000 Gloucester fishermen who have lost their lives at sea over the centuries and a reminder that fishing is our country’s most dangerous occupation? The statue is the work of sculptor Leonard Craske (1877-1951) and is based on a 1901 painting by Gloucester artist A.W. Buhler. It is an 8-foot-tall bronze statue positioned so that the fisherman is looking out over Gloucester Harbor. The fisherman in the sculpture was modeled after Capt. Clayton Morrissey, a prominent Gloucester fisherman, once the captain of the Effie M. Morrissey. A small plaque on the north or street-facing side of the base reads, “Memorial To The Gloucester Fisherman, August 23, 1923.” A larger recessed panel on the harbor-facing side of the base holds an inscription of bronze letters taken from the Bible’s Psalm 107:23, which reads: “They That Go Down To The Sea In Ships 1623-1923.”
I know that everyone in Gloucester knows this, but there may be some GMG readers out there that don’t.